Good Translators
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Constance Garnett |
The job of the translator is made easier if the TL reader does not know the SL. Translations of major works of literature can be taken as examples. As far as an Indian reader is concerned, it would be difficult to read Tolstoy or Cervantes or Victor Hugo in the original. But if it is to be well received, the translation cannot appear to be too ‘foreign' in style, either. In such cases the translator has to smooth over the linguistic and stylistic peculiarities and make the text accessible to the reader. Here the emphasis is on making the text reader-friendly and hence the translator can take a few liberties in translation.
It is precisely because the translator is as important as the writer that they get due recognition in the translation of great works or why great works have more than one translation in the same language. Pablo Neruda's poems were translated into English by Alastair Reid, Pasternak (from Russian to English) by Constance Garnett and Nikos Kazantzakis (from Greek to English) by Peter Bien. Camus's The Outsider was later retranslated and published as The Stranger. Marcel Proust's French classic was known as Remembrance of Things Past to the English-speaking world. This Shakespearean title was its translator C.K.Scott Moncrieff's choice. But the multi-volume book got another title in a recent translation – In Search of Lost Time – which is more in keeping with the novel's content. The difference in title is a giveaway of the difference in perspective that the two translators had. Milan Kundera insisted on a retranslation of all his works including his very famous The Unbearable Lightness of Being, saying that the earlier translations had not done justice to his works. Cervantes's Don Quixote was translated again and published in the 400 th year of its history. If it had not been for good translators the classics in alien languages would have remained out of bounds for us. Translators remained more or less ‘invisible' in olden days as nobody even mentioned them. Fortunately this situation has changed today and the literary world notices translators more; there are even awards given for good translations. |
